Pick up Your Dead
by Sixth Limb of Sephiroth
Summary: ...or else. -Eye see you.-


_From Sixth: You know...it took me nearly a month and a half to get this up here... Why? I'm not sure. It was just really hard. And either way, I'll bet this still came out pretty funky regardless of taking my sweet time editing and/or just trying to type out even one sentence. Took a lot of willpower I shouldn't have had to expend because this should have came easy. Well, easier than some things... And this is even quite tame. Har.  
_

_I thank Fran for saying it was pretty good for what she'd read. And then Woodster for saying it was...er...solid (I'm paraphrasing?) enough for...whatever. Okay. Three down, one more to go. Instead of just Vamp, hopefully, the entirety of Dead Cell plus Solidus will be able to play. And then...other shit I SHOULD be typing but the energy to do is so tremendous._

_P.S.: This is **necrophiliac** and even a bit ghoulish in nature. Get out or read on if you're into that kind of thing. After reading something here and there, I felt compelled to throw this in for the sake of some. Or I don't know. We're all such sensitive in one way or another. Thank you.  
_

* * *

"_Hal... Hal... I miss you... I miss you...__"_

When his body hit the briny sea's surface, the rush came as fat, slimy claws digging into his ears, crushing his face and chest. The sea cradled him by as strong but careless a bystander as an old, wet woman. And this old crone's mystique scornfully surged for the one refusing her clammy hold. Her low voice, in turn, sank against his ears like the roiling floods they were, endless, reprimanding, perhaps even appealing on the side. His brain unhinged slowly, like a poorly made cup filling with water too heavy and impure for its own good, ready to break if the pressure held.

He wanted out.

So he reached, practically muscled and clawed, through myriad layers of murky brown to golden sea for the surface. He pulled for solid steel and gasped for salty sea air. But where cool breezes struck his twisted, snarling face, his mind raged and his cold eyes glazed.

Head-shots were never a nice thing to suffer.

Not one bit.

They left him sore, angry, even a little lost. Each bit of brain blown away and thereafter replaced always seemed to lack a certain something. Something he knew would eat at his fiery haze until he stunk absolutely rotten. And the inconsiderate gust would only vex him more, spearing cold where it didn't belong.

But the scent, that scent.

That scent still hung in the air. Faint. Enticing.

It wasn't rot. It wasn't death— or maybe it was; he couldn't quite distinguish which, or whose.

It was something, though; something.

It was so simple and pure, his lust for it climbing.

Muscles twitched for the need. Fibers curled under his skin like anxious fingers, the kind bred for the hunt: sharp as teeth and quick as nails.

Blood.

It was everywhere.

The halls were tinted veiny rose, rippling idly for one fevered blink was all it took to make the whole world wave rampant. Every screw, every handle, every pipe, door, and wall waxed the color of watered down blood, flowing blood— rosy blood— that he smelled at this very moment. Warm blood, blood running cool.

The few, shy drops on the floor.

As he saw it, as he smelled it, as he felt it...

He had to get to it.

Soon.

Now.

* * *

What remained after that?

What stayed behind, even after what had gone came back as only a blank mirror of its former self? Missing all the memorial scratches that said 'This is me and this is who I've been for as long as I can remember'?

Still a thirst for blood.

Still an instinct shared by man and beast.

The base desires. The base needs.

* * *

Shell One Core was quiet as a tomb. It _was _a tomb, or would be one if anyone stayed behind. Of course; with Arsenal Gear resting beneath his very feet, the entire facility was set to strip away at a moment's notice. Between the sad, monotonous calls of 'missing Hal' drifting through the waterproofed corridors, another voice, a warning voice, begged for evacuation. Launch was imminent. But exactly when, the seawater's sting and air's icy spear barred all recollection. And the warning voice was on its last, willing legs of urgency which all too soon gave way to hollow, deafening quiet.

Vamp's heart rattled at the absence of life.

Almost.

"_I miss you... I miss you...__"_

Flapping wings caught his wired ears. Wings, words: they were both the same thing, the same sound. Drones. They were meaningless; but they hurt. They stabbed at the sensitive film closing around the innards of his skull, an unsatisfied film that wouldn't let him rest until he found his blood and drank.

The dazed man of Dead Cell writhed and ached on his feet. So many nerves were pulsing under his paling skin, wriggling. Like worms. Thirsting worms. His veins were snakes, hungry snakes; starving, dire snakes. Everything below his shivering husk mocked life, live things that squirmed and shrilled silently in the dark, torturous things as if someone had sliced him open here, there, everywhere, pushed them in, and moved them around. Fingers, hooks, wires, all of them twisting, curling, wrenching inside him.

Vamp cringed.

These sensations were agonizing, yet exhilarating.

That blood, all he wanted was a taste and perhaps the suffering would cease.

"_Hal...?__"_

Dazedly, he ogled the delicate but uneven cross on the wall, a tiny green feather pinned but one knife from its center. And the owner of said feather flitted off in crazed peeps and squawks— what a damned elusive thing that he would've otherwise been able to peg like a taxidermic butterfly, if not for the bullets and the bloodlust and the deafening quiet.

But it was gone now.

Vamp was alone.

So, he ached harder.

He pressed against the metal walls like a leech thirsty for the wet cold easily savored against them. It spread across his chest, up the side of his neck and face, shoulder to shoulder, and down his belly. But it wasn't to quench the fire for blood. The halls tilted. They even groaned. Had Arsenal started moving? No, there was still time. There had to be. Still time to find his tantalizing feast. The cold walls would aid his cold body, a fitting crutch to reach his destination. Like birds of a feather flocking together. Sliding together. Even existing together.

The friction drew blood to frigid places— the extremity of it all like Spanish fly in his veins— that decidedly burned and tingled in hasty reply. He hardened, pursed and peaked against the chilly surface.

Such pain; such ecstasy. Where would it end? And where would the other begin?

The hall's end.

A plainly lit end, a descending end. An end down which he'd have to be careful not to fall and break his neck. Too soon to die yet again. Not before...

The computer room burbled noises, those common electronic noises of self-governing machines. Some, he'd gotten used to. Others, he'd maim, he'd kill, for them to cease. If only he had his blood now, they wouldn't matter. They wouldn't bother him in the least.

Was that blood?

Yes.

That was indeed the scent at its strongest.

It was not the state of freshness Vamp sought, however. It was an hour past, at best; he was certain. The faint smell of liquid copper— as it lingered on still warm skin, not so oily that it stung and stunk, not quite ripe but delectable all the same— hours, even days, away from the sickly sweetness of decay.

He soundly fell to one knee. He ran gloved fingers up and down his throat, teeth flashing, eyes rolling. The wires, the worms, the snakes agonized impatiently. The very roots of his fangs throbbed. Every inch of his damnable body sang in triumph. He had found his quarry.

Or rather, he had found it, again.

A thing not so plump and not so frail, lying coyly to one side like a lamb's leg on a silver platter. So much of that skin just flushed with liquid life. Though it faded even then, the warmth, the air, the vigor. Pooling into that stain on her left; flushing faintly in her cheeks; flooding her throat; those supple little limbs. It wasn't yet time for that ruddy flush to drain away. The sight was enough to bring him on creeping hands and knees, to thirsty pants and prickling flesh.

It was the girl prodigy.

He hovered over her like a drunken spider, limbs taut but shuddering while he bent low for a view. There was no breath to steal while he studied. She was dead. Wholly. What little warmth lasted, it radiated from the girl's skin in the tiniest waves. An hour's worth of death still warm, warm enough for decent taste.

His right hand streaked through the shallow stain slinking away from the body. It crusted around the edges but stayed thick, dark, and wet towards the source. Vamp brushed middle and ring fingers across his lips, against the tip of his tongue.

Sometimes, a woman's diet made her taste so good.

So good.

So, slowly, almost lazily, Vamp drew his hand along his inner thigh, fingers straying, rubbing, finally catching on the sheath resting against his crotch. Those fingers keenly hefted the sheath's bottom— those fingertips hefted a bit more, but deeply and longingly. The knife's handle popped the clasps that kept it securely in place, to which he sighed. What a sound, what a sound. And with that same hand, those same fingers, he clutched it tight.

He pounded, rushed, and pulsed. His vision blurred, the veined pink turning muddy red. Had it only been a trick of the eyes? A trick of thirst, of hunger? What did it matter?

She wouldn't feel it if he were a little careless. But there wasn't any harm in being a mite precise about it, either.

Vamp slipped the blade beneath the girl's chin, his knuckles grinding into her sternum. Simple enough, an offhanded whiff betrayed no cloying heat— that was, the rutting woman's heat. It was something of a favorite, at times. But the heeded scent had only been fear in life and the increasing loss of control over bodily function.

Best to be a little quick, as well.

He bore down on the blade, spying a well of red form beneath the too sharp edge. Both skin and fabric— and these useless bandages, unfit to even hold water— surrendered and curled faintly outward as he drew the edge lower and lower, until he hit the central joint of her pubic bone. To pry it apart would make her gape. Just a bit, if not much. He could chalk it up to curiosity to dig his knife deeper but...

Sometimes, leniency shined. And being just a girl, surely she had a tightness to favor, among other things. So why not let her keep it?

Vamp slipped a middle finger into the bloody, flowering seam as it ended somewhere below her parted navel, swirling it to get a feel of the warmth that lingered trapped inside. A few degrees cooler than liked, but what use was there in complaining? Here, only pleasure had its use while it lasted.

With his left hand free, he firmly and haphazardly scooped the fleshy ragdoll into the crook of his arm, all the while pushing his finger up through the warm, sticky slit to the base of her throat, jamming it in slow but hard.

Thusly, she purged a merry clot of blood; it oozed from the corners of her small lips in tempting, trailing beads. Vamp's heart crashed in his chest at the very sight; it cracked in his ears, drummed up and down his struggling arms. This was it. His blood feast.

Warm, frightfully warm for such a dead girl.

He took wide licks from ear to ear; he wound his long tongue into her mouth for the semisolid bubble trickling for freedom, all the while moaning raggedly from the pit of his gut. It was like feasting on an apple overflowing with caramel; the blood was thick and syrupy, dulcet in its taking. Too much so.

Fires rose.

His free hand wandered low, trailing blood over perked flesh and still healing scars— the self-inflicted scars of a man disturbingly prideful in his work. How it couldn't have gone any other way. Even without the all-encompassing hands of the Patriots. Perversion was a more intimate device molded by man, and by the man still vested within him.

Still a man.

He pushed his sheath to the side, grimacing and squinting down through rippling red at the sleeping face before him.

It was almost a shame to ruin her. But all was fair in hunger and lust. Impiety, be damned.

Vamp yanked at the zipper and clasp of his pants. Yes, even the very thought screamed a dirty soul dipping into eternal damnation. Where had...this...come from? One could have said it stemmed from those two black days and all the hateful love and horror they spawned. Yes. For this. But did beasts understand? To some extent. But the clouds of blood in his eyes did more than just muddle his vision. His thoughts were no more than lust themselves. And it would get things done, duly and properly, if a bit sloppily in the meantime.

She was light on her knees as he dragged her into his lap, to settle her just as needed for that perfect entry. These limbs of hers, they were fluid in their limpness, draping over him like the curtains of sculpted meat that they were. All of it, nothing but pretty meat to slake his thirst. The way she bled down her center, dripping thin rivulets on his bare stomach and below, it was so exciting that the bullets lodged in his skull were all but forgotten. Lost in these seas, aimless in this haze.

"Emma...Emmerich...Danziger," he drawled.

Her name had been a useless detail up to now, and to remember it in this single heated moment...

Vamp felt strangely close.

Her name, the acknowledgment that she had one and that she too was a human being in shape and form, would make the blood, the pleasure, that much sweeter. That much more intimate, as ephemeral as it would be— a mind game; an anchor to those funny shreds of humanity hanging from the old gaping hole in his chest; a strange measure to cling to something he'd been shedding for who knew how long and how much.

Even his hips felt it as they bucked forward beneath her, the traction found suiting from the poly-spandex hugging her thighs and rear. As he rocked with gaining strength, his hands brushed simply across her split chest, uncovering the palest nipples of breasts barely fresh from adolescence. Like the slightest mounds of fresh cut veal.

He'd seen better. But this was just a girl he had here. What was left of one, a bunch of unripe meat on a plate, with glistening lines of dark blood running down her mouth and out of her middle with every other thrust.

She flopped and she lolled, impeccable little flesh-doll bending to his every bodily command.

Inside, Emma— oh Emma, what a girlish name that was, and almost as darling to call out— was comfortably tepid and snug. So snug. Yet her heat rose. As expected. With no arousal coming from her end, no wetness of any sort— but of course, a breaking of skin had come about and thus, a meager bloodletting— penetration would be quite rough on her.

And it was.

Emma, oh Emma, broke so easily down there. The poor folds, the poor walls, so fatally unresponsive and unyielding, but still failing to endure his strength.

Vamp wondered how much of the rest would fare. Especially the bold curve of her neck so enticingly vulnerable.

With her shoulder in one hand and hair in the other, he pulled the girl's neck muscles taut— the sternal bunch, the trapezius winging down the back, what beautiful things, muscles. From the serenely pumping blood spilling from the base of her throat from such, such, _such _eager thrusting-

His mind circled and circled.

-on up the nervous, darkling trails strung in the corners of Emma's lips, he worked his tongue, worked it to the root, until, until his chin came to rest against those forcibly tightened muscles. He wished for the frightened thumps of a live heart, making the blood as hot and harried as possible, making it the best meal a man could ever have waiting at the end of his famished teeth.

These teeth— at first they'd only been for show in his early years, but now they allowed for easier eats— glutted themselves on the warm liquid and tearing flesh before his frazzled brain could catch up. That gracious artery, still mild, still pliable, fitfully squeezed some of Emma's life free even as it ran from more holes than one, two, or three.

How much time had passed?

Did it even matter?

As the invincible one, as an immortal... Would it ever matter again?

To go down with Big Shell, he'd need only rise again— with even so little will as to be forced to revival.

Emma, Emma, she was sweet inside and out. Soft and fragile. A treat away from treats.

Vamp's eyes glazed over with such red, her body was nothing to see anymore. He only felt her. And she felt good. All over.

He swallowed chunks and shreds that snagged on his teeth, as this certain well running dry as blood pooled elsewhere. Muscle, jugular, tough yet juicy. Her right collarbone was pulled slightly askew, her breast lifted and overly perky for the biting. Poor thing, to be ravaged like this. Poor, poor, delicious Emma Emmerich Danziger.

She felt good. She felt so good. And tasted good.

It would have been a shame to find no release in her.

It would have been a shame to only half-ass the defilement of her plain but pretty body.

"_Hal?"_

He let Emma slump backwards, head first, to the floor. And he moved with her, hands firmly on her hips to keep her mounted sweetly. That broken mind of his, some of it would come, the rest would go, fingers tracing from her thighs to his, lastly wringing them like a yoke for an extra squeeze where she was losing her grip. His own hands felt good, too.

How the girl never said a word. She wasn't so tightlipped with a hint of life in her. But this, secretly this was heaven. The haste of his own heart, his own blood, his own love— whatever it didn't come to mean— lust and some semblance of life, all reflected themselves in her. The way a most proper mate should.

The family Dolph stayed a sacred exception to that rule, of course.

Coming, coming.

The proper mate, the perfect mate.

Vamp's thighs trembled madly.

It was only a dream.

Such thoughts...were not for him.

There remained only one way to clear his mind, to return to his favored primal state. Where there was only flesh and blood and the joy of feasting on it and merging with it.

He took out his knives. The small ones. So hard to clutch at a time like this. Coming, coming. To finish what he started. The urgency rising once more. The bloodlust becoming a sheer terror, a beloved terror that made every inch of him tremble. Back where it was safe.

Vamp flung the girl's arms out from her side, bucked and bent to flatten them out on the floor. For each hand, he twisted and snapped her slender digits before splaying them straight, watching the pinched pink color flush in the joints then drain away completely. Rearing up and bearing down on Emma's weakling pelvis, he let out a chilling sigh, running his knives between his lips and down, down his bare chest— not quite bare. He was a man. And men grew hair. Followed that happy trail.

"Little Miss Emma," he'd murmured breathlessly. "Time...to wrap it up. I'll make you something pretty... Ahhh..."

For all her good sportsmanship, for all her young blood— for all the pleasure between her legs, above and below her skin, as her skin... Emma Emmerich Danziger would get her just reward. With a knife here and a knife there, Vamp would have her pinned just the way he wanted.

* * *

A soft echo sang throughout the empty, rippling halls. It was just a voice; a mechanical voice, but filled with a simple nostalgic note. It craved a past long gone, yet the constant echo of these four distinct words meant it was falling on deaf ears. Miserable, little echo. If only it could have been snatched out of the air and laid to rest in the sea. Because no one or thing would ever answer it again. Damned thing.

"_Hal... I miss you."_

There was a butterfly on the floor— someone's misplaced pet in this giant contraption of alloy and steel. It only looked half of what it was, more than dead and wholly welcome to fall into the depths alongside Big Shell. Because this was as far as it would ever get. Staked in place, pink and red wings awkwardly spread, fluttering in the rising water.

Such outward neglect.

Its owner wouldn't deserve anything else, if only for this.


End file.
